TY - JOUR T1 - Opportunities and challenges for real-world studies on chronic inflammatory joint diseases through data enrichment and collaboration between national registers: the Nordic example JF - RMD Open JO - RMD Open DO - 10.1136/rmdopen-2018-000655 VL - 4 IS - 1 SP - e000655 AU - Katerina Chatzidionysiou AU - Merete Lund Hetland AU - Thomas Frisell AU - Daniela Di Giuseppe AU - Karin Hellgren AU - Bente Glintborg AU - Dan Nordström AU - Kalle Aaltonen AU - Minna RK Törmänen AU - Eirik Klami Kristianslund AU - Tore K Kvien AU - Sella A Provan AU - Bjorn Guðbjörnsson AU - Lene Dreyer AU - Lars Erik Kristensen AU - Tanja Schjødt Jørgensen AU - Lennart Jacobsson AU - Johan Askling Y1 - 2018/05/01 UR - http://rmdopen.bmj.com/content/4/1/e000655.abstract N2 - There are increasing needs for detailed real-world data on rheumatic diseases and their treatments. Clinical register data are essential sources of information that can be enriched through linkage to additional data sources such as national health data registers. Detailed analyses call for international collaborative observational research to increase the number of patients and the statistical power. Such linkages and collaborations come with legal, logistic and methodological challenges. In collaboration between registers of inflammatory arthritides in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland, we plan to enrich, harmonise and standardise individual data repositories to investigate analytical approaches to multisource data, to assess the viability of different logistical approaches to data protection and sharing and to perform collaborative studies on treatment effectiveness, safety and health-economic outcomes. This narrative review summarises the needs and potentials and the challenges that remain to be overcome in order to enable large-scale international collaborative research based on clinical and other types of data. ER -